System event logging

Portal, Express Beta Version 6.1
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux,Windows

System event logging

The system event logging facility of IBM^® WebSphere^® Portal Express enables the recording of information about the operation of WebSphere Portal Express. Event logs provide administrators with information on important or abnormal events, especially errors that occur during the operation of the product. In addition, event logs gather debugging information that helps IBM support to resolve problems.

WebSphere Portal Express provides two types of logging: logging of messages and logging of debugging messages called traces.

For information about how to use log files and a list of trace logger strings refer to WebSphere Portal Express logs.

This topic has the following sections:

Message logging

Trace logging

Using separate log files

Changing the log file name and location

Changing the language used in the log file

Reference: Log file format

Message logging

WebSphere Portal Express provides the logging of messages that report errors and status information.

The following types of messages are provided:

Informational: A condition worth noting but does not require the user to perform an action.
Warning: An abnormal condition has been detected. The user may have to take action. However, WebSphere Portal Express code is able to handle the condition without failing.
Error: A serious failure in the execution of the application that requires further action.

Trace logging

WebSphere Portal Express provides the logging of debugging messages called traces. These traces are useful for fixing problems. However, to save system resources, they are switched off by default.

Traces can be set for different durations:

Temporary

Traces can be set for a temporary period by using the administration portlet Enable Tracing or the IBM WebSphere Application Server administrative console. To set traces by using the portlet, proceed by the following steps:

From the Main Menu click Administration > Portal Analysis > Enable Tracing. The Enable Tracing portlet appears.

Type the required trace string into the field Append these trace settings:. For example, this can be com.ibm.wps.command.credentialvault.*=finest

Click the Add icon. Enable Tracing updates the field Current trace settings:

Note: Restarting WebSphere Portal Express will remove traces that were set by using the Enable Tracing Administration portlet. To disable tracing, do either of the following:

Select the current trace settings under Current trace settings: and click the Remove icon. By the example given above, the current setting can be com.ibm.wps.command.credentialvault.*=finest.

Type the trace string *=info into the field Append these trace settings: and click the Add icon. This trace string overwrites all settings listed under Current trace settings: and resets it to the default.

Extended

To enable trace settings for a longer period of time, that is, for more than one session, switch them on in the WebSphere Application Server configuration.

Access the WebSphere Application Server Administrative Console by using this URL: http://hostname:port_number/ibm/console

Go to the Server > Application servers section.

Select the application server.

Click Troubleshooting > Change Log Detail Levels.

Specify the required trace settings. For example, this can be com.ibm.wps.command.credentialvault.*=finest

Save your updates.

Restart WebSphere Portal Express.

To disable tracing, specify tracestring: *=info and restart WebSphere Portal Express.

Using separate log files

Changing the log file name and location

When you configure WebSphere Portal Express to write its trace and message logging to a separate log file, a new file named trace.log is created. This file is updated when an error occurs or if trace logs are created. The file is created in the following directory:

Windows: portal_server_root\log

Linux: portal_server_root/log

i5/OS: portal_server_root/log

You can change the location and the name of this file by changing the configuration key logFileName in the log configuration file log.properties. The file is located in the following WebSphere Portal Express directory:

Linux: portal_server_root/shared/app/config

i5/OS: portal_server_root/shared/app/config

Windows: portal_server_root\shared\app\config

The specified log file name can contain one of two tokens that are automatically replaced with the corresponding values when starting WebSphere Portal Express:

$APPSERVER_NAME: The name of the application server. Use this token for vertical clusters to enforce that the different application servers write into different files or directories if they share the same file system.

$CREATE_TIME: The date and time at which the file was created.

You can specify the location of the log file either using a relative path or an absolute path.

If you change the location of the log file, restart WebSphere Portal Express in order to use the new location.

Changing the language used in the log file

By default, information in the log file is written in the language that was used for the WebSphere Portal Express installation. However, because WebSphere Portal Express supports a number of languages, you can choose to have the log file information written in a language other than that used during installation.

To change the language used for the log file, edit the file log.properties. This file is located in the following WebSphere Portal Express directory:

Windows: portal_server_root\shared\app\config

Linux: portal_server_root/shared/app/config

i5/OS: portal_server_root/shared/app/config

Add the following line:

locale=xx

where xxis the two-letter abbreviation for the locale. For a list of the locale abbreviations used with WebSphere Portal Express, refer to Directories for languages. For example, to have log information generated in English, you would add the following line:

 locale=en

Reference: Log file format

If the logs are written to the log file of WebSphere Portal Express and not redirected to the logging facility WebSphere Application Server, the log file consists of a sequence log records that are separated by blank lines.

The log records have the following format:

     timestamp classification classname method threadID
     messagecode: logmessage

Where:

timestamp is the time (to the millisecond) when the log record was created.

classification is one of the following letters:
- E for error messages
- W for warning messages
- I for informational messages
- l for traces (low details)
- m for traces (medium details)
- h for traces (high details)

classname is the Java class containing the code that triggered the log event.

method is the name of the Java method containing the code that triggered the log event.

messagecode is a unique identifier for this message, to uniquely identify the specific message and refer to it when consulting documentation or support. The message code is only available for error, warning, or informational messages, and not for traces. It consists of:
- a four-character identifier for the component that defines the message.
- a four-digit number identifying the message in the component.
- a one-letter classification code, which can be E, W or I , as defined above.

logmessage is the actual log message describing the logged event. Error, warning, and informational messages are translated into the system locale. Trace messages are not translated.

threadID is the identification of the thread that triggered the log event.

Note:

Traces are written only if the specific tracing facility is enabled; all other messages are written unconditionally.

The system locale is part of the general internationalization features of WebSphere Portal Express and can be configured via LocalizerService. For more information refer to Configuring portal behavior.

The following is an example of a log record:

2003.05.16 13:36:14.449 W com.ibm.wps.services.datastore.DataStoreServiceImpl init 0000003a
DSTO0063W: The transaction isolation level is not set to READ_COMMITTED.

The current value is TRANSACTION_REPEATABLE_READ.

Parent topic: Logging and tracing

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